My only experience is with a couple of cheap Foscam units managed by SecuritySpy on a Mac, and I'm pretty pleased with the setup. My understanding from following the release notes of that software and the Android app I use to connect to my cameras is that there are sets of models from each manufacturer that use the same or similar protocols, but that there's no one standard across all makes and models. Something like motion detection is generally something you'll set up in the software, and SecuritySpy has nice features like being able to mask out an area of the camera's field of view that's ignored for motion detection purposes (in case you have a busy street in front of your house or whatever.)

I think I will give ZoneMinder a look, though, since there's a module for my NAS that might simplify my setup a bit, assuming the feature set is close enough to what SecuritySpy offers.